Post #664563 by tiki mick on Sat, Jan 19, 2013 10:25 AM

On 2013-01-19 07:58, Trailerpark Tiki wrote:
Well I certainly love Hawaiian music and The Smokin' Menehunes. Every time I see them at Mojave Oasis, I'm the guy right up front soaking up the vibes. I thank you Lucas for perpetuating the music you guys play. I also love slack key, exotica and surf. If I lived in Socal I would be there at the Slack Key Festival for sure.

Although some tiki afficionados are not fans of traditional Hawaiian music, it holds a special place in my heart. I grew up on the islands in the 60's and 70's and those mele transport me to a different time and place. Hawaiian music, including hapa-haole music, is important to me personally because Hawaiian culture was dying 50 years ago. Even with the renewed interest in Hawaiian culture a big part of it is gone forever. This Hawaiian doesn't want to see our culture fade away like so many other ancient peoples. So, yes I had a Hawaiian band play at my 50th birthday party at my tiki bar last year and I'm proud of it!

BTW-I hope to see both you guys at Mojave Oasis again this year. -Wade

Thanks for your kind words, trailer...means a lot to me!

Hawaiian music is an interesting style that will always have fans. Maybe because the music is universally good, and most of the musicians are great players. That video that BTD posted is a fine example of what slack key is all about. If you go to the islands today, though reggae is huge there are always musicians doing the slack key style. When I was last there, I saw a guy in a major hotel playing slack key style on a uke. He did this by using effect pedals to set up the drone (normally played by the lowest two strings on a guitar tuned slack, as the video shows)and then he was layering the top part with finger picking much like that guy in the video was. For a goof, I shouted out some hapa haole songs and saw his face light up...he obliged me with several, and he was really, really good at it.

But these hawaiian music fans are not tiki people, that's for sure! They tend to be older surfers and what people call "blue hairs"...anyone that used to catch us play at the catalina fish kitchen way back with Uncle Bill knows the crowd...and can tell these were the original inhabitants of tiki bars back in the day..

One of the most interesting gig we ever played was in a backyard, for a bunch of surfers...Bong can also tell you about it, but it was funny...here we were playing "sleepy hotel music", yet the surfers were standing around us in a semi circle, beers in hand, taking in every bit of it! It reminded me of playing in my high school rock band, when the people in the backyard would do the exact same thing...but this wasn't rock, but old time hawaiian music we were playing. That crowd really "got it", and it made is very happy to have an audience that really appreciated what we were doing.

Well folks, off to the ITMP now! see you there!